Читать книгу The Nature of College - James J. Farrell - Страница 18

American presentism also keeps us from a careful consideration of the future. College is, of course, a preparation for what comes next, and—despite the immediate demands of our clocks and watches—college students worry about the future a lot. But that future is usually individual and instrumental: We’re more concerned about preparation for graduate school or a career than about the quality of our communities or the fate of the Earth. Like other Americans, college students aren’t very skilled at imagining the long future, or making collective plans for the world they want to live in as adults, partners, parents, and citizens. Most Americans tend not to be very mindful of future generations, and when we are, we often ask, as devout utilitarians do, “What has the future ever done for us?” This shortsightedness makes it difficult, if not impossible, to confront systemic issues like urban planning, poverty, environmental degradation, or global weirding. That’s why, as Robert Paehlke says, “Time horizon may be the most important distinction between environmentalists and others.”⁸

As a consequence, we don’t think much about the future as something we create today, both in our activity and our inactivity. We don’t notice that we are making history with each of our everyday actions. As a result, we collectively create a future that few of us really want to live in. Like it or not, what we do either reinforces ideas and institutions today, or transforms them for tomorrow. When we approach our studies as tools for civic engagement, we learn how to change the world. When we explore possibilities for environmental responsibility in our own lives, we provide possibilities for future citizens, and so we create a future with our examples as a part of its usable past. Alternately, when we settle for a present so stressful or unpleasant that it drives us to waste time with escapist TV, we create a future with more commercials and commercialism and couch potatoes, reinforcing images of people and society that often contradict our deepest values.